Starship Asterisk*

Wanderers

Explanation: How far out will humanity explore? If this video's fusion of real space imagery and fictional space visualizations is on the right track, then at least the Solar System. Some of the video's wondrous sequences depict future humans drifting through the rings of Saturn, exploring Jupiter from a nearby spacecraft, and jumping off a high cliff in the low gravity of a moon of Uranus. Although no one can know the future, wandering and exploring beyond boundaries -- both physical and intellectual -- is part of the human spirit and has frequently served humanity well in the past.

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I suspect that we humans will deploy AI-controlled robots and then will alter the human genome to pre-adapt explorers to their destinations.
Darwin spoke of speciation as the result of adaptation to different environments.

BTW, "planet" is Greek for wanderer, as I recall, so the title is a play on words.

I already have this video playing in the gallery outside the planetarium entrance! It really is compelling and spectacular, but it's not just pretty pixels. These days we're really, REALLY good at making pretty pixels. That's not why this grabs me.

Wanderers is a visualization -- like an architectural rendering of a two-kilometer-high skyscraper. What's shown here would be challenging to say the least (let's work on that skin-tight radiation shielding, shall we?) but it's not warp drive or antigravity. No fingers-crossed physics, but things which may be within our reach. A good jumping-off point for my next astronomy class...

Really makes me miss Carl, but obviously his words live on and continue to inspire.

-- Marc Taylor

Wow! This is a stunning video to watch and, while I know I won't see it in my lifetime, it would be a dream to be that close to one of our other planets.

Does anybody know what player the latest VIMEO video "Wanderers" uses? Is it Flash?
It refuses to play on my Linux system so I might have to search for an appropriate plugin.

tarazed wrote:Does anybody know what player the latest VIMEO video "Wanderers" uses? Is it Flash?
It refuses to play on my Linux system so I might have to search for an appropriate plugin.

Have you tried viewing it directly on the Vimeo website? Sometimes it helps.
http://vimeo.com/108650530

Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried it but it still does not play. I must be missing some plugin or other. Adobe Flashplayer is supported up to version 11.2 I think; after that it has to be Pipelight plugins. But it might not be flash. Some of the newer systems have no Linux support at all.

@tarazed
Some of you may still not have a good hi-speed internet connection and/or enough RAM, (as my laptop only has 4 MB RAM and that is only really about 2.5 MB of usable RAM. So when at any site to play videos, you can always easily click the HD settings in the lower right of the screen and drop it from some of these demanding so much to run a 720 p video, and instead select it down to say, 480 p or even lower to 360 p. Then it may stream more smoothly for some of you. I personally shoot a lot of video at 1080 p and over 40,000 images on my digital camera odometer now of hi-res digital photography in astro-photography and other, but my 5 yr old Toshiba Laptop is getting old and rather slow for today's many hi-res online video streaming.

*Just an aside here to let you know what I have been through, and to claim that I was also in APOD on Nov 17th 2006. See the archives. And yes, I was rather archaic then and still today with my astronomy large hand sketched pastel art from direct observation through the telescopes.

Hope this helps a little,

Mark Seibold, Portland/Sandy Oregon, Artist-Astronomer for 60 years.

Alright alright alright... Slick. I don't jump off cliffs, just because it's cool. I just really like it.

Wow! You need to do more of those on this site.

WOW! Inspiring and wonderful. Almost forgot that those emotions were but the accidental collocation of molecules and chemical reactions in my brain destined for the eternal ash heap of star dust.

Beautiful enjoyable video

tarazed wrote:Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried it but it still does not play. I must be missing some plugin or other. Adobe Flashplayer is supported up to version 11.2 I think; after that it has to be Pipelight plugins. But it might not be flash. Some of the newer systems have no Linux support at all.

The video doesn't use any plugins. It does require Javascript to be available (or at least, that the necessary elements aren't blocked). No problems with the latest version of FF on my systems (both W7 and W8) with all extensions and addons disabled.

That video used Carl Sagan's voice, but would he have approved of it's physics content?

1/ Jumping off a high cliff on a low gravity body. Yes, you float down as shown. But gravity is gravity and mass is mass. If your fall was as far as shown, you would still be travelling quite fast at the bottom, with no means of slowing down. Death, from impact or vacuum, unless of course, you had a jet pack.

2/ Those blimps, apparently on Mars. Bigger crew/cargo quarters than an Earthbound dirigible, but the envelopes are the same/smaller, in an atmosphere with a density equivalent to the Earth's, 35 kilometers high. They just wouldn't take off, even if 'filled' with vacuum.

3/ And what was that 'star ship on a rail'? At first I though it was on a space elevator built from the Moon - good idea! Less garvity to start with, but it morphed into something in deep space.

JOhn

Epic video - kudos to Erik Wernquist! Link to his page on it is http://erikwernquist.com/wanderers/

That site has a gallery with some still images from the film, which are labeled with their locations:

http://erikwernquist.com/wanderers/gallery.html

Here are the names of the ones you can click on there:

Earth: the_open_road
Earth: leaving_home
Jupiter: the_great_red_spot
Saturn moon: enceladus_limb
Saturn rings: ringsurf
Mars: mars_elevator
Mars: cape_verde
Mars: blue_sunset
Moon of Saturn: iapetus_ridge
Asteroid: excavation
Asteroid: terrarium
Moon of Jupiter: europa_view
Titan (Saturn moon): ligeia_mare
Miranda (Uranus moon): verona_rupes
Saturn: ringshine

Each one has more of a description. I'd love some more discussion here of the details of each spot.

JohnD wrote:That video used Carl Sagan's voice, but would he have approved of it's physics content?

1/ Jumping off a high cliff on a low gravity body. Yes, you float down as shown. But gravity is gravity and mass is mass. If your fall was as far as shown, you would still be travelling quite fast at the bottom, with no means of slowing down. Death, from impact or vacuum, unless of course, you had a jet pack.

I don't see a problem here. This form of recreation has been discussed in many places. Given the very low surface gravity of small bodies, it is completely possible to jump from cliffs if they are not too high (a kilometer, perhaps) and still arrive at the bottom with a low enough velocity to land on just your legs. And of course, we don't know what other arresting devices might be provided.

2/ Those blimps, apparently on Mars. Bigger crew/cargo quarters than an Earthbound dirigible, but the envelopes are the same/smaller, in an atmosphere with a density equivalent to the Earth's, 35 kilometers high. They just wouldn't take off, even if 'filled' with vacuum.

There may be some artistic license there, although to be fair, we can't really tell the true size of the blimp, and we don't know anything about the density of the structures hanging off it. It isn't certain that something like that couldn't work on Mars.

3/ And what was that 'star ship on a rail'? At first I though it was on a space elevator built from the Moon - good idea! Less garvity to start with, but it morphed into something in deep space.

It is a space elevator. I think you're confusing what was at the bottom- a lit up lunar base- with deep space.

JohnD wrote:That video used Carl Sagan's voice, but would he have approved of it's physics content?

1/ Jumping off a high cliff on a low gravity body. Yes, you float down as shown. But gravity is gravity and mass is mass. If your fall was as far as shown, you would still be travelling quite fast at the bottom, with no means of slowing down. Death, from impact or vacuum, unless of course, you had a jet pack.

2/ Those blimps, apparently on Mars. Bigger crew/cargo quarters than an Earthbound dirigible, but the envelopes are the same/smaller, in an atmosphere with a density equivalent to the Earth's, 35 kilometers high. They just wouldn't take off, even if 'filled' with vacuum.

3/ And what was that 'star ship on a rail'? At first I though it was on a space elevator built from the Moon - good idea! Less garvity to start with, but it morphed into something in deep space.

JOhn

Imagination and "artistic license" Guv....;o)

JohnD wrote:That video used Carl Sagan's voice, but would he have approved of it's physics content?

1/ Jumping off a high cliff on a low gravity body. Yes, you float down as shown. But gravity is gravity and mass is mass. If your fall was as far as shown, you would still be travelling quite fast at the bottom, with no means of slowing down. Death, from impact or vacuum, unless of course, you had a jet pack. JOhn

On Miranda the gravity is so low that a sufficiently powerful "jet pack" could probably be made out of a properly insulated three-liter bottle of soda stuffed with Mentos. In any case, the cliffs are so high it would take ten minutes to reach the bottom... plenty of time for astronaut Goldie Blox to invent something on her way down.

JohnD wrote:2/ Those blimps, apparently on Mars. Bigger crew/cargo quarters than an Earthbound dirigible, but the envelopes are the same/smaller, in an atmosphere with a density equivalent to the Earth's, 35 kilometers high. They just wouldn't take off, even if 'filled' with vacuum.

Heated hydrogen and graphene something something.

Not to discourage you. You are asking engineering questions. Go forth and engineer! I want my kid to have a honeymoon on the actual moon.

-- Marc T.

This short film is a large plate of Awesome. slathered in savory gravy of Make It So.

@chris peterson
about:config indicates javascript enabled
High bandwidth connection, FF ESR 31.2.0, Vimeo no show,

tarazed wrote:Does anybody know what player the latest VIMEO video "Wanderers" uses? Is it Flash?
It refuses to play on my Linux system so I might have to search for an appropriate plugin.

My system is openSUSE 13.1. I'm using Firefox 33.0 with the latest GNU/Linux version of Flash, Cisco OpenH264, and no other multimedia plug-ins. I'm having no problems.

This was one of the best APOD features ever. I am a 10 year APOD watcher and this was just great! Loved hearing Carl Sagan.

And WE are the Wanderers....not just the Planets....

:---[===] *

tarazed wrote:@chris peterson
about:config indicates javascript enabled
High bandwidth connection, FF ESR 31.2.0, Vimeo no show, :cry:

Well, something could still be disabling certain Javascript functions.

I'd try a different browser, to see if your issue is with FF itself, or something in the system (including some kind of filter in your Internet connection).

It's also possible the video has regional blocks in place. You might try it through Tor or some other proxy service and see if it makes a difference.